Science is unintuitive

ibbly.com

5 pointsjonp2 comments

Love the post. Earlier today I wrote about asking people at random about dropping an orange and melon from the top of the building and wondering how many people would know the answer.

Broader question. Is science really unintuitive or is our lack of intuition a symptom of the fact that we view science to be something learned in school, and not as something ingrained within our psyche. IMO, all of us should have a fundamental understanding of Bernoulli's principle, Newton's laws, basic chemical reactions, etc. It makes the world around us more interesting.

Good experiments are those whose results are surprising, because these are the ones we're learning from. How much worth is an experiment teaching us what we already know? In that sense, good science is unintuitive by definition.

However, since this great stuff taught in school, the once surprising results don't surprise anymore. The next generation is grown up with it, so is develops a direct feeling for it. Science seems to be intuitive. But that's only the old results. Newer results are still surprising, at least to that generation. And the generations thereafter will have their moments of surprise, too.

That's progress.

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